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Beyond the Byline: Seeing Metallica live was a reflective, fun experience

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Thunderstorms in the forecast for the Wyoming Valley this week

<p>The Trump administration got caught attempting to commit fake math last week. It didn&#8217;t succeed.</p><p>Here&#8217;s what happened: Every year, the president is required to send Congress a budget proposal, to lay out his wish list for taxes and spending. President Trump ordered up a plan that would lower taxes, increase military spending and balance the budget within 10 years, all without cutting Social Security or Medicare.</p><p>And that&#8217;s what his budget director, Mick Mulvaney, delivered. But to meet his boss&#8217;s unrealistic goals, Mulvaney produced a document that didn&#8217;t make much sense.</p><p>That&#8217;s not just my view; it&#8217;s the view of fiscal experts in both parties, including several senior Republicans in Congress who quickly declared the president&#8217;s budget dead on arrival.</p><p>To reach Trump&#8217;s target, Mulvaney assumed that the economy will grow by an average of 3 percent a year for the next decade, a rate higher than any mainstream forecast. And he cut spending deeply on almost every non-defense function, from cancer research to Medicaid and other programs for the poor.</p><p>Even Republicans said the cuts were unrealistic.</p><p>&#8220;Meals on Wheels, even for some of us who are considered to be fiscal hawks, may be a bridge too far,&#8221; said Mark Meadows, chairman of the achingly conservative House Freedom Caucus.</p><p>Then it got worse. Budget experts noticed an oddity in Mulvaney&#8217;s arithmetic. The proposal estimated that his 3 percent growth in the economy would produce more than $2 trillion in increased tax revenue, helping to balance the budget. Most of that growth, in the administration&#8217;s view, would be produced by the big tax cuts it&#8217;s seeking.</p><p>But the budget didn&#8217;t mention the revenue that would be lost by the tax cuts &#8212; a number that could reach, oh, $2 trillion or so. Instead, it listed the tax cuts as &#8220;revenue neutral,&#8221; meaning they&#8217;d produce as much revenue as they lost &#8212; thanks, of course, to 3 percent growth.</p><p>In short, the White House counted the same $2 trillion twice &#8212; once to pay for the tax cuts and once to reduce the deficit.</p><p>That wasn&#8217;t the only oddity. The budget called for abolishing the estate tax, but nevertheless counted $330 billion of revenue from estate taxes. It called for funding Trump&#8217;s wall on the border with Mexico, but provided less than 10 percent of what the Department of Homeland Security says a wall would cost.</p><p>Of course, the Trump administration and its allies have had problems with arithmetic before.</p><p>They&#8217;ve raged against the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which last week estimated that the House Republicans&#8217; healthcare bill would result in 23 million more people without health insurance &#8212; and raise costs for millions more.</p><p>&#8220;The (CBO) is simply incompatible with the Trump era,&#8221; former House Speaker Newt Gingrich wrote with a double meaning that was presumably unintentional. &#8220;It is a left-wing, corrupt, bureaucratic defender of big government.&#8221; (The current CBO director was appointed by the Republican leaders of Congress.)</p><p>Trump officials have also contested the government&#8217;s estimates of unemployment &#8212; except when the number goes down, in which case they claim credit for the change.</p><p>They&#8217;ve claimed that Trump was the victim of widespread voter fraud on Election Day, despite the absence of evidence, arithmetical or otherwise. They&#8217;re even spending federal money to investigate the problem.</p><p>And the president still thinks he drew the largest crowds in history to his inauguration, even though photographs and calculations prove him wrong.</p><p>This refusal to accept that 2+ 2 = 4 isn&#8217;t ordinary political spin or the quirk of a former real estate developer who once promoted a 58-story building as offering 68 floors. The Trump administration&#8217;s war on math is just one front in a broader war on facts &#8212; including the new practice of dismissing any negative report as &#8220;fake news.&#8221;</p><p>And it&#8217;s strategic. It&#8217;s aimed at avoiding accountability.</p><p>Trump&#8217;s proudest claim, now that he&#8217;s president, is that he&#8217;s keeping the promises he made to voters in his campaign. Only he isn&#8217;t. His unrealistic budget plan won&#8217;t produce a balanced budget. The health care bill he backs won&#8217;t cover everyone, won&#8217;t reduce their costs, and won&#8217;t protect Medicaid. The tax cuts he said would benefit the middle class would flow mostly to the wealthy instead.</p><p>What&#8217;s an embattled president to do when he can&#8217;t deliver? Attack the scorekeepers &#8212; whether they are journalists, the CBO, or the budgeters.</p><p>Most people, however, aren&#8217;t buying what Trump&#8217;s selling.</p><p>Being president, as Trump has complained, is harder than being a real estate promoter. There&#8217;s far more scrutiny.</p><p>In the case of the budget flimflam, for example, Trump may have outfoxed himself. One budget expert, former Senate Democratic aide Stan Collender, says the administration&#8217;s unrealistic numbers have probably killed Republicans&#8217; chances for passing a tax bill this year &#8212; and maybe next year too.</p><p>If he&#8217;s right, that&#8217;s a big problem for Trump. Those tax cuts were the core of the president&#8217;s economic program, the key to producing anything like 3 percent growth. No tax cuts means no Trump bump. And voters would notice.</p><p>Trump is still waging his war on facts. But the facts are pushing back.</p><style>
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<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>Doyle McManus</p><p>Guest Columnist</p></bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta><p>Doyle McManus is a columnist for the Los Angeles Times. Readers may send him email at <a href="mailto:doyle.mcmanus@latimes.com">doyle.mcmanus@latimes.com</a></p></shirttailMeta></div>

Their view: The Trump administration wants us to think 2 + 2 = 5